Heavy Weapon [by PopCap Games]

PopCap is very well known for its games.  Bejeweled is one of the games that most people associate with casual gaming and PopCap is definitely the site for the crowd.  With many very well-received releases including Zuma, Insaniquarium, and Bookworm, developers know that a game released by PopCap is a near sure-fire success.

With so much success in the past in working with the casual gamers, it is no real surprise that PopCap might want to continue to grow with that market while also testing new waters, and their up-coming game Heavy Weapon definitely fits the bill as stepping outside of what they have been doing to see what else they can do. 

Heavy Weapon is a nearly completed action oriented game that we were thrilled to get a chance to play.  The first impression is definitely a good one that shows PopCap is very capable of bringing its strong ability to identify simple but addictive concepts and make them suitable for a broad spectrum of gamers to a little less casual group of gamers.

In Heavy Weapon you are in control of a very sophisticated tank.  This killing machine has a large array of weapons at its disposal that become available to you as you progress through the game.  The basic weapon is a turret gun, which is improved upon in both its power and its spread as you move forward through the game.  At the end of each level, if you are able to get through the towering end boss, you are treated to a trip to the armory where you are able to pick out additional power-ups for the vehicle.  These include defensive orbs, a laser, two kinds of missiles, flak guns and lightening. 

One of the initially interesting things we found in the game was the ability to reassign your points at the beginning of each level to the different power-ups.  If you decided that the normal  missiles weren't for you, you can take back your point assigned there and instead put it on a flak cannon.  This ability is also available when you return and continue a level, which allows gamers to figure out which combinations work for them.

The 6 different power-ups that can be added to the tank can also be improved upon.  Each of the weapons has multiple levels, which will make them strong, or faster, or both depending on which power-up you choose.  You could to decide to put all of your weapons on one item, or two spread them out to as many of the power-ups as you desire.  We found ourselves mixing and matching the different power-ups quite a bit in determining which ones worked the best for us on each level based on some of the more difficult enemies that you face.

Control of the tank is done entirely with the mouse.  Moving the mouse left to right moves the tank left to right.  Moving up and down moves the cannon up or down.  Moving to the diagonals moves both the cannon and the gun.  Since you are using a mouse and not a joystick, you are almost always moving towards a diagonal, and we were pleasantly surprised at how natural and easy it was to move and fire at the same time, using the same control mechanism.

The graphics of the game rely on parallax scrolling for the backgrounds, which comes off quite nicely in showing some depth while using a limited number of layers.  The many different enemies are well-varied, with different types of bombs, missiles and other weapons, and each is looking superb at this stage of the game's development.  The missile effects and explosions are also very well drawn and quite rewarding for each of those many kills.

With just a few weeks likely left before release Heavy Weapon is shaping up as a great game that shows that PopCap can do just about anything it wants in the gaming world and come away with a winner.